Regarding the mysterious leveling off of methane in the atmosphere. I know that chemical reactions speed up as temperature
increases. Has the small warming of the last century been enough to measurably increase the rate at which atmospheric methane
breaks down?

]]>By: Steve Sadlovhttp://climateaudit.org/2007/01/30/unthreaded-3/#comment-77866
Wed, 14 Feb 2007 22:00:26 +0000http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1108#comment-77866RE: #446 – The bottom has fallen out of natural population increase among the G8ish countries and it’s heading that way even in the developing countries. The few places still strongly growing are countries that are borderline failed states and cannot grow much more without serious social issues and strife, both of which will limit additional growth. So clearly, Ehrlich’s (and the earlier Malthus’) ideas of positive exponential population growth (eventually leading to disaster) are wrong. Even as recently as the 70s no one was talking about the global peak / reversal of population ~ 2050 (or earlier), that’s how poorly we comprehend real world population dynamics. Add to this wars and new virulent diseases, and the chances of “exceeding the carrying capacity” are right up there with me becoming king of the world – or far less. Ehrlich is yet an other boy who cried wolf and it disgusts me that people still believe his lies.
]]>By: Gerald Machneehttp://climateaudit.org/2007/01/30/unthreaded-3/#comment-77865
Wed, 14 Feb 2007 19:49:19 +0000http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1108#comment-77865Re #426 and “validation”. That new paper by Hegerl says “Validated” 1500-Year Temperature Reconstruction. Is it too late to be in IPCC 4AR? Interesting how inaccurate models validate inaccurate proxies.
]]>By: W. L. Hydehttp://climateaudit.org/2007/01/30/unthreaded-3/#comment-77864
Wed, 14 Feb 2007 19:07:41 +0000http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1108#comment-77864I was forced to sit through a speech by Suzuki a couple of weeks ago. The man certainly has charisma! I play in a ‘big band'(a la Guy Lombardo) and it was a fund raising formal dinner and dance for the new medical faculty at the university in Prince George, BC. He referred to predictions of Paul Ehrlich,(?) of all the failed prognosticators, and also an unamed study by scientists 15 years ago, warning mankind that we only had 10 years(?) to take action before doom would befall us. He implored people not to drive their SUVs 5 blocks to the store.(He didn’t offer to come up and help carry my groceries) At the end of his long screed I sat through a standing ovation thinking, “These people are Doctors and they’re taken in!” It was very uncomfortable, to say the least.
Now I read that our new Environment Minister Baird chose Dr. Suzuki with whom to have his first consultation. It’s the Charisma factor, in IMHO that’s the problem. Gore has it too.(I saw him on SNL) Tony Blair certainly has it! We need equally charismatic skeptics to step forward, now, and counter the effect of these main players.
Cheers….theoldhogger
]]>By: Steve Sadlovhttp://climateaudit.org/2007/01/30/unthreaded-3/#comment-77863
Wed, 14 Feb 2007 18:13:25 +0000http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1108#comment-77863Metrics I have personally given up on and will no longer consider to be valid indicators of purported anthropogenic GHG driven GW (or lack of it):
– Arctic sea ice extent (as currently understood from satellite data)
– BCP ring widths
– The surface temperature record
– Glacier mass balance in tropical (especially monsoon affected and borderline monsoon affected) areas, the Alps, and the Rockies
– SSTs
– Any cryospheric metric in Europe, anywhere west of 10 degrees E longitude and anywhere south of 55 degrees N latitude

Steve S, there is an interesting situation in the tropical Pacific at the moment. A blob of quite cool (for the tropics) water is upwelling in the eastern Pacific while anomalously cooler water is also mixing upwards towards part of the Pacific Warm Pool. As a result, I would not be surprised to see tropospheric temperatures trend in a negative direction later in 2007.

]]>By: Steve Sadlovhttp://climateaudit.org/2007/01/30/unthreaded-3/#comment-77861
Wed, 14 Feb 2007 17:30:28 +0000http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1108#comment-77861RE: #438 – I am not a dowser or anything like that, but I am fairly adept as “reading the signs” in terms of the overall sense of nature in my particular neck of the woods. The “signs” (everything from time frames of leaf drop, moisture, animal behavior, weather patterns, etc) suggest that we are flipping or have flipped back into the 1940ish – 1976ish negative PDO phase, or something higher order that creates a similar set of synoptic constraints.
]]>By: jaehttp://climateaudit.org/2007/01/30/unthreaded-3/#comment-77860
Wed, 14 Feb 2007 17:13:26 +0000http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1108#comment-77860Ian: makes sense to me. So the sensitivity is 0.84/4 = 0.21 deg/Watt M^2, which is in general agreement with other estimates of sensitivity.
]]>By: Ian Shttp://climateaudit.org/2007/01/30/unthreaded-3/#comment-77859
Wed, 14 Feb 2007 16:54:35 +0000http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1108#comment-77859jae,

I’ve been thinking about it some more and the simple result of taking the derivative of the Stefan-Boltzmann equation is inescapable:

dS/S = 4 dT/T

It doesn’t matter what absorptivity (or emissivity) or other complicating factors one uses (these are all inherently captured in the base value of T) due to the outgoing flux being proportional to the fourth power of temperature, a 1% change in temperature requires a 4% change in incoming energy — everything else remaining constant.

In the case of a ‘forcing’ of 4 W/m^2 and an average solar flux of 342 W/m^2 I get: